Constantine J. Katsanis and
Lea Prevel Katsanis

Abstract

In the current competitive business environment, AEC firms cannot afford to ignore business development activities. Yet the project-centric nature of business has driven both resources and focus towards the project at hand to the detriment of systematic, focused and on-going business development activities. Lack of existing research has hindered the adoption and deployment of efforts on an industry-wide scale. The need for marketing is acknowledged by industry participants. This study examines the current state of business development practices in a series of case studies of AEC firms in North America. The findings suggest that most firms are attuned to the importance of business development for their practices. A latent infrastructure exists in AEC firms and this infrastructure is to some extent used by the leading AEC firms examined. The results suggest that that the relationship marketing paradigm is already serving as a platform for the deployment of business development in the industry.

Keywords: Architecture; Engineering; Construction; Business Development; Marketing.

"A few years back we had to face the reality that business is not coming in the way it used to. So I set up a marketing committee to involve a larger number of players, so that we sell the services of our company in a way that it is not the responsibility of one person but of several. Also, this way the committee has the opportunity to assess who of the people were better equipped to do so [it is also in] this way we selected our current VP Business Development ".
CEO -- Major Consulting Engineering Firm

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